| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: generally called 'knowing' rather than 'learning,' but the word 'learning'
is also used; and you did not see, as they explained to you, that the term
is employed of two opposite sorts of men, of those who know, and of those
who do not know. There was a similar trick in the second question, when
they asked you whether men learn what they know or what they do not know.
These parts of learning are not serious, and therefore I say that the
gentlemen are not serious, but are only playing with you. For if a man had
all that sort of knowledge that ever was, he would not be at all the wiser;
he would only be able to play with men, tripping them up and oversetting
them with distinctions of words. He would be like a person who pulls away
a stool from some one when he is about to sit down, and then laughs and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: troubled much about her, scarcely going to see her one night a
week. She consoled herself, I believe, with an actor from some
theatre or other.
I went out for dinner and came back almost immediately. I had a
fire lit in my room and I told Joseph he could go out.
I can give you no idea of the different impressions which
agitated me during the hour in which I waited; but when, toward
nine o'clock, I heard a ring, they thronged together into one
such emotion, that, as I opened the door, I was obliged to lean
against the wall to keep myself from falling.
Fortunately the anteroom was in half darkness, and the change in
Camille |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Adventure by Jack London: see her as she stood up and uttered them. He smiled. The instant
she heard the news she had made up her mind to go. It was not very
flattering to man, but what could any man count in her eyes when a
schooner waiting to be bought in Sydney was in the wind? What a
creature! What a creature!
Berande was a lonely place to Sheldon in the days that followed.
In the morning after Joan's departure, he had seen Tudor's
expedition off on its way up the Balesuna; in the late afternoon,
through his telescope, he had seen the smoke of the Upolu that was
bearing Joan away to Sydney; and in the evening he sat down to
dinner in solitary state, devoting more of his time to looking at
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